Corbis acquires Demotix [updated]

Corbis and Demotix have not disclosed the terms of the deal, which will see the number two stock agency take over Demotix.

The deal comes a year after the two companies announced a “global media distribution partnership” which saw Corbis distributing Demotix’ images and videos.

In an email sent to its contributors, the Demotix team writes: “The acquisition represents an enormous step towards our goal of becoming a truly competitive international photojournalism agency. Corbis have been an extremely supportive partners over the last 18 months, and the results of our collaboration are plain for all to see: doubling our contributor base, doubling our image and video ingest, and multiplying sales many times over.”

The team adds that the acquisition “should only increase and deepen” these benefits.

According to the latest figures shared by Demotix, the agency has a community of more than 6,500 active freelance professional and semi-professional photographers and videographers, who contribute nearly 50,000 images monthly.

Gary Shenk, CEO of Corbis, says the deal will help Corbis provide more breaking news imagery to its clients, while Turi Munthe of Demotix adds that “this acquisition will serve to increase the impact and opportunities for Demotix contributors”.

Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with Nikon DSLR equipment. I do unpaid TFP and paid work.